Psychic Predictions — To Share or Not?

About an hour or so ago (1:00 pm EDT), I had a dream in which I was informed by another character in the dream that Las Vegas had been hit by a terrorist attack, I think with poison gas, in one or more of the casinos. Logically, that’s an easy prediction to make — just as New York is America’s most important city economically, Las Vegas probably symbolizes “western corruption” more than any other city here.

So knowing this leads me to a quandry, one common to many psychics, of figuring out what to do with the information. No knows better than I how unreliable most psychic information is. Ninety percent of it is so mixed with subconscious hopes, fears, and fantasies that it is essentially useless. This is one of the reasons why I learned how to read tarot cards nearly forty years ago; to provide a set structure for my intuition to shape its premonitions. It’s also what led me to a policy decision over the years to use the “ridicule factor” to help me decide what to do about such information.

If the worst thing that will happen when I tell people a prediction, or have a hunch to do something, is that people will laugh at me for being wrong, then I go ahead and do it. If the worst thing that will happen if I stay silent or ignore a hunch is a death or injury, then I speak up or take action.

Thus, a combination of the Death and the Chariot cards in particular locations in my usual tarot spread usually leads me to warn the querent to get his or her vehicle checked for safety problems, or to take extra care when traveling. If they return for another reading, about half of them tell me that there was something seriously wrong with their brakes or tires or something else that could have caused an accident.

In the case of a premonition about a terrorist strike, my pre-9/11 instinct would have been to make an anonymous phone call to appropriate law enforcement authorities. Now, however, I would be likely to be disappeared by the secret police if I made such a phone call. So I think what I am going to do about such premonitions in the future will be to post them online. That way the authorities who sift the net for terrorist threats will get the information and can decide whether to ignore it or not, while ordinary citizens can choose to avoid threat zones if they are believers in psychic phenomena. In fact, I may just start up a page on our website for people to register such premonitions. If several psychics independently get the same vision/ hunch/ premonition, it might mean that the event has a higher probability of occurance. Of course, it might also mean that several people are following the same subconscious logic…

Either way, it would provide a platform for people who believe they are psychic to participate in protecting their homelands (and keep them from bothering the authorities directly). I predict that this approach would be a win/win for all parties concerned — with no disappearances necessary…

About Isaac Bonewits

World famous (or is that notorious) Druid/Wiccan/Heathen/Santarian author, speaker, pundit, etc. Google me to see what I've been doing with my life and what my friends and enemies think about me.

One Response to Psychic Predictions — To Share or Not?

First of all, psychics make tips all the time. I have no idea how they log said tips or if they follow up on them, but I do know you don’t get “disappeared” for reporting a premonition. That’s highly insulting to the law enforcement and national security communities, whether or not you like the administration.

The American government has been disappearing people ever since 9/11. Granted, at the beginning, it was mostly people with Arabic ancestry and/or Muslims. The core of my phrasing, however, is that I don’t trust my own government, no matter how many good people may be in it at low and mid-levels of authority.

Second, your idea of a website to log psychic premonitions is missing a huge logical piece. If people can read the premonitions submitted, what’s to stop them from just “jumping on the bandwagon” (or for that matter, the terrorists using it to pick a new target) and therefore having no real scientific verification of said premonitions.

I wasn’t think of it in scientific terms, but more as a matter of surveying psychics to see if particular premonitions cluster. I choose to assume that most psychics are honest, especially about matters that won’t earn them money or fame. Since most of the terrorists likely to attack American targets are Christian or Islamic Fundamentalists, I rather doubt they would choose targets based on what “heathen” psychics are saying. Still, it might be better to make it a private website to which only I and a few others would have access.

I recommend that you instead provide a link to the FBI’s Tips line and allow trained professionals to sort through the information.

You just did! It’s up to individual psychics whether they want the FBI to have their name and address.

Last, but not least, the details you’ve posted here about your dream are highly vague and would not provide any method of narrowing down an attack. If perhaps you had a name, or a place or a time or a date or the scale, it might be useful. At this point, though, it is just a dream.

Indeed. And if I submitted it to a premonitions registry I would say exactly that.